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anniversary of accident
Every year around this time I fall apart. I have so much guilt and shame about my inability to let go. 8 years ago two days after my 28 birthday my grandmother got in a fatal car accident and died two days later. I seemed at the time that it was inappropriate at the time for me to be hurting so much. Afterall her daughters were not as visibly shattered. As I tried to put together the pieces of how and why she died in such a bazaar way nobody bothered to tell me how much she had been drinking that evening. A fact I am still not allowed to speak of. She was my heart and soul. She was my ear and my cheerleader. I miss feeling a part of a family like that. I miss her smile, I miss being so well understood.
Response
Most people don't think of guilt and shame as addictions, but I do. (An addiction is any self-destructive behavior to which we are enslaved because to set ourselves free would require changing ourselves in some essential way). There is nothing that is served by your being caught in guilt and shame. Your relationship to your grandmother was uniquely yours and does not need to be compared in its depth to anyone else's (including her daughters!). It so happens that I just returned from a visit to my 96 year old mother whose relationship to her grandchildren is profound. They would describe here as you have described your grandmother: their ear, cheerleader, heart and soul. I would not describe my relationship to my mother that way. I thought to myself that my nieces lives will be affected by my mother's death very differently than my life. Missing your grandmother is a good thing. Allowing yourself to remember and grieve her loss is a good thing. Focus/give energy to what is good.